The simple lesson I learned from 369 hours of Mass Effect

Why these three games were so damn great—and why the ending, good or bad, doesn't matter.

That's nine 40-hour work weeks of time spent in the Mass Effect universe, according to the combined reports of Steam, Origin, and my creaky old Xbox 360. Eighty-six hours went into the original Mass Effect (three playthroughs), 189 hours into Mass Effect 2 (six playthroughs), and 94 hours into Mass Effect 3 (three playthroughs).

Commander Shepard and his crew—sometimes her crew, but we'll get to that—have done plenty of galaxy saving under my control. They fought aliens, robots, clones, politicians, and reporters. They stood united against enemies vast and unknowably timeless. They have, in the words of James T. Kirk, "been through death and life together."

They're my friends.

OK, they're not really my friends; claiming to be buddies with imaginary characters is a little too geeky even for me. The Mass Effect series is not without its flaws, and some are truly Reaper-sized. But it has gripped me like nothing else in the history of video games, and video games and I go back a pretty long way.

A brief video summary: what I learned from re-playing the Mass Effect series from start to finish.

As the first anniversary of Mass Effect 3's release approached in early March, I embarked on an epic playthrough of the entire Mass Effect series. My goal was not just to finish all three games but to see if I could actually role-play a character through the series. I wanted to take an angry, win-at-all-costs Commander Shepard and transform him through fire into a caring, compassionate leader who values the means as much as the ends. I found this to be both easier and far, far more difficult than I imagined.

Each game takes at least 30 hours to play properly, so I did a lot of my playing in eight to 10 hour stretches on weekends. My wife is sick of hearing me describe scenes and characters to her, but honestly, as the closing notes of "Farewell and Into the Inevitable" echoed through my headphones, I found myself sadder about the end of the epic three-game playthrough than I expected to be. Mass Effect is just that good, and I want to tell you why. It might not be for the reasons you're expecting.

A note about spoilers: This piece is going to be filled front-to-back with spoilers from all three games. We'll talk about plot arcs and choices, the fates of the characters, and the endings. By the time we're done, we'll have touched on tons of stuff across the entire series. If you haven't played the games but still want to, this will kill a whole lot of the mystery and anticipation. This is your first and only warning!

Infinity and beyond

He said, she said, and the gender-bending Commander

To give the player more flexibility in assuming the role, Shepard's gender can be customized at the start of the games. Canadian actor Mark Meer provides the sharp baritone voice of the male Shepard ("ManShep"), while the throaty contralto of Shepard's female incarnation ("FemShep") is performed by veteran voice actor Jennifer Hale. Both actors are many-times Bioware alums, and each puts a unique spin on the role of Commander Shepard.

The majority of players—more than 80 percent, according to Bioware—play as ManShep. This is a shame, because Hale's work in all three games is incredible, and her performance in the first game far outshines Meer's unfortunately wooden delivery. The series is well worth playing as both ManShep and FemShep, as often the two voice actors have different takes on the same situation. My first Mass Effect run was with the Hale-voiced female Shepard, and even though I use ManShep as my "canonical" character, FemShep still holds a special place in my heart. Hale does "menacing" far better than Meer ever manages.

For the sake of brevity, I refer to Commander Shepard as "he" throughout this piece. However, Mass Effect fans who have never experienced Hale's vocal work owe it to themselves to play one of the games as FemShep.

The Mass Effect universe is that rare thing—a fully-realized science fiction game setting that stands up to the likes of Star Trek or Star Wars. The universe in which the games take place has a rich and complex backstory, and even better, it's not a rich and complex back story that the player has to have info-dumped into his head. This isn't The Old Republic, where you have to read thousands of awful Kevin J. Anderson "Extended Universe" novels and have a working knowledge of the seven prime forms of lightsaber combat to get the most out of the game.

There's depth in the backstory, but it's not the kind of depth that ever compelled me to memorize the game's codex entries. (Do you really need to know that the "First Contact War" between humans and Turians started because humans activated a mass relay in violation of council law and that the war culminated in the siege of Shanxi? No. It's wonderful flavor, but it's not mandatory knowledge.) The world is alive and compellingly real just through dialogue and character actions, without needing endless narration. The first game's opening title crawl essentially says, "This is the future and aliens are real and you are a space soldier. Go." That's enough.

Instead of a galactic civics lesson, Mass Effect focuses on a human, the forever-first-nameless Commander Shepard, and his fight against the ancient Reapers, an enemy that aims to rid the galaxy of advanced sentient life for a whole bunch of really complicated reasons. That fight is the central focus of all three games, though Shepard's path from soldier to savior twists and turns and doubles back on itself like a demented snake.

The feel of the Mass Effect universe permeates every scene, and in that way it feels a lot like other good Bioware games. In Knights of the Old Republic, for instance, you never forgot you were in Star Wars—the sounds, the colors, the costumes, the look and feel of each room and character were all carefully tuned. Mass Effect is the same. The future is a cool blue neon with glowing flecks all around it. Orange and yellow and green floating computer screens and omni-tools. People and aliens all dressed head to toe in form-fitting slickness. And curves everywhere—the future is dominated by curves, from the Mass Effect logo down to every nook and cranny on every spaceship.

298 Reader Comments

I haven't read the entire article yet as I'm working through ME3 now, but I can't think of game series I could put over 350 hours in. Even games like Diablo 1, which I play every few months, I only have 150 hours in max.

I'm sorry Lee, but much as I oppose Ben Kuchera's views on the series, I have to oppose yours too.

The let down of the ending is too big a problem to let pass with "well the rest of the game was good so we'll just ignore the ending".

We WORKED to get the ending we thought we deserved. We made choices throughout the three games that would give us an ending that represented what we did. And we were massively let down.

The gameplay itself was fine. I had the occasionally need to load from savegame after getting stuck in impassable terrain, and escape some other bugs, but the core gameplay was relatively decent.

But having played a trilogy of games to come so far only to have everything we worked for disregarded was a real slap in the face. I had fun playing, but after seeing what became of it, why should I bother playing again?

I've only played through each game once. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of time to play games multiple times.

But I will say that what has been said in this article mirrors that of my own experiences with Mass Effect (and to an extent, Dragon Age). When ME2 came out, I was a lonely freshman in college with no friends... and as much as I hate to admit it, the crew of Mass Effect were written so well that, for a brief wrinkle in time, I saw them as actual friends.

Love them or hate them, BioWare is masterful at creating characters players can resonate with and even "care" about, in a way. I wish more developers would take BioWare's approach in terms of character writing.

I'm not going to say the series was bad, but it got worse as time went on. What started as an interesting new take on a RPG shooter hybrid slowly devolved into a generic 3rd person shooter with dialogue trees and to top it off, the "choices" really ended up not mattering.

I'm not saying that the first one was perfect (inventory mess, technical issues), but it was my favorite. I'll also take the clunky mako any day over planet scanning.

So much truth here. The journey was something that felt unique to me. It was MY journey, and since I experienced it the way I wanted to (sort of based on the concept of the decision making that guides mass effect), it made the games very personal to me. Heck I even decided to sneak a tiny normandy into my tattoo (upper 3rd of my back).

The franchise has a very special place in my heart, and unlike most games, it's driven mainly by how I was able to experience the story. It didn't feel like 'playing a game', but a guided exploration with purpose and glory.

I haven't read the entire article yet as I'm working through ME3 now, but I can't think of game series I could put over 350 hours in. Even games like Diablo 1, which I play every few months, I only have 150 hours in max.

I probably have around 600-700 hours across the Battlefield franchise. I know people who have thousands of hours in those games alone.

"The ending of Mass Effect 3 has absolutely no bearing on the journey that the player took to get there."

I simply can't take this statement seriously! A bad ending to a book typically makes it a bad book. When ever have you watched a movie with an awfully inappropriate ending to then tell people what a great movie it was? Heck, you want to talk about endings, listen to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and tell me how that whole piece of music doesn't exist in our consciousness simply because of the "ending". A bad ending, an ending that is blatantly anti-climatic does in fact ruin everything that preceded it, because of how our brain works - last impressions are lasting.

I'm not going to say the series was bad, but it got worse as time went on. What started as an interesting new take on a RPG shooter hybrid slowly devolved into a generic 3rd person shooter with dialogue trees and to top it off, the "choices" really ended up not mattering.

I'm not saying that the first one was perfect (inventory mess, technical issues), but it was my favorite. I'll also take the clunky mako any day over planet scanning.

I suppose it depends on what you value in games like these. Personally, I didn't care much for the gameplay in ME at all, though I will say that they finally got the shooting right in ME3. The characters and the general writing were what mattered to me.

As someone who spent about the same amount of time in the universe of Mass Effect, I have to agree the majority of the game was the ride of a lifetime...in game terms, anyway. The characters were compelling, the story details rich, and the game was addicting enough to make you not want to put down the controller. I've only had that experience with Mass Effect...the next closest thing was Fallout 3.

However, I will say the original ending hit me hard. I had avoided spoilers of all kinds, staying clear of any/all articles with Mass Effect in the title for 2+ months. That wasn't easy, but I knew I would be in for a mind-blowing experience if I could avoid the spoilers. Sadly, I was right. That ending was wretched. I got through it and went..."What?" It killed any real desire to play through the last game again. I didn't until the new ending...and then only to replay the end as good/bad...not as FemShep. (My order was good, bad, and then FemShep as whatever...based on all the good feedback on voice acting.)

So, the journey was definitely the best in my experience in video game history...but the ending really killed it for me. I bought every single DLC for 1 and 2...not a single item for 3. The Citadel DLC is tempting...but it won't happen until its on 50% sale or more. I'd love to go back, but my journey with Shepard is over...Bioware can't make up for it after the fact, at least, not when they want me to pay for it.

I agree with ya Lee. I was satisfied with the ending, however I only ever played it with Director's Cut. The ending doesn't invalidate the journey taken there.

While I agree 100% that the endings don't ruin the game, they are still incredibly disappointing. ME3 is such an extraordinary game. While the revised endings aren't terrible, its hard not to wonder just what they could have been if bioware had spent an extra 6 months on the series instead of rushing to meet the deadline. Theres those little hints of something so much greater that had been planned but never fleshed out.

I couldn't disagree more with the general sentiment of this article. Like andyfoo, I found that the finale that they supplied, particularly in the face of what the devs had previously promised, were a crushing disappointment. I played through ME1 and ME2 numerous times, and I had a set of characters that I wanted to take through ME3: the ending was so, so bad, however, that since beating it I haven't picked it up again.

For me, the high points in the game actually accentuate the unbelievable awfulness of the conclusion: seeing the Geth/Quarian conflict resolve itself the way I wanted *because* of my actions was enormously gratifying, as was Mordin's fate. Even the game's awful points—space ninja, for instance—were forgivable given how good the game was up to the end because I felt invested in writing my own story.

Then, of course, the real writers decided that they had a vision that they simply needed to get across and that realizing their vision was far more important than both the previous promises they had made and the core conceit of the first two games. For me, that was enough to kill what was special about the series. I have no desire now to replay any of them knowing how pointless my efforts are with respect to what I cared about in the story.

I agree with ya Lee. I was satisfied with the ending, however I only ever played it with Director's Cut. The ending doesn't invalidate the journey taken there.

While I agree 100% that the endings don't ruin the game, they are still incredibly disappointing. ME3 is such an extraordinary game. While the revised endings aren't terrible, its hard not to wonder just what they could have been if bioware had spent an extra 6 months on the series instead of rushing to meet the deadline. Theres those little hints of something so much greater that had been planned but never fleshed out.

These games are really amazing. I still think the first one may be the best in many ways. I first got interested when I saw it as a non-licensed version of Knights of the Old Republic, as the play style is the same. I didn't realize until I was over my head in the game that it was far better.

You are different from me author. The ending ruined more than the ending for me. It was my favorite franchise ever, I was pretty vocal in my support of the game to all my friends. I RAVED. Then I finished the third game.

It is my opinion, and my opinion is it was garbage. Either they put a huge amount of thought into that ending, or they didn't. I'm guessing the latter. For me, it ruins EVERYTHING. I am not alone in this either.

Maybe you are trying to justify the insane amount of hours you spent playing the game?

The franchise had in me as fierce of a fan as can be, and then it lost me forever to complete indifference.

Edit- I play role playing games for the story and the story alone. It is the single largest factor in my enjoyment.

Edit2- I have never felt insulted by a game until that ending. Then Diablo 3 happened, but that is another tale.

I still look back fondly at the story and the characters, but the ending killed all my desire to go back and play the game. I haven't touched it since that disappointment - even the 'director's cut' wasn't enough, I just watched it on youtube. (The 'go fuck yourself' option was a nice touch, admittedly. Otherwise that was a disappointment, too.)

And of course: Femshep is cannon shep. Dudeshep never seemed particularly interested in anything, ever.

I agree with ya Lee. I was satisfied with the ending, however I only ever played it with Director's Cut. The ending doesn't invalidate the journey taken there.

While I agree 100% that the endings don't ruin the game, they are still incredibly disappointing. ME3 is such an extraordinary game. While the revised endings aren't terrible, its hard not to wonder just what they could have been if bioware had spent an extra 6 months on the series instead of rushing to meet the deadline. Theres those little hints of something so much greater that had been planned but never fleshed out.

Indeed, this is the only explanation that makes sense. An ending that has been foreshadowed through the first two games is replaced by one that seems rushed, incomplete and nonsensical? And this is somehow an issue of artistic integrity? Pull the other one...

Damn you, I literally teared up reading this. I hated the ending to ME3 and I promised I would never buy any of the DLC, but I am going to have to. This article captured everything that was right about theses effect series and why I have played through the first two games countless times. I miss the crew of the Normandy like I miss my real life family sometimes even though it's "just a game". The real joy of Mass Effect is that it managed to consistently evoke some sort of emotion. I miss EDI. I miss Joker. I miss Wrex. I miss Garrus, a lot. I miss Mordin and Tali and even Jacob.

Congrats author, you just made EA $15 and killed my free time for the rest of the month.

I haven't read the entire article yet as I'm working through ME3 now, but I can't think of game series I could put over 350 hours in. Even games like Diablo 1, which I play every few months, I only have 150 hours in max.

Terraria. i've put in over 300hrs in that alone. Yes, I am insane XD

It helps that the game is so lightweight that I can play it on the lowest speced of laptops.

The ME3 ending was such a sucker-punch to the gut that I didn't play a single video game for two full months after beating ME3 the first time. No joke. I could barely turn on my PS3 to watch a video. I felt so incredibly betrayed by the awful, awful writing and total disregard for everything I'd done as a player and a customer that it felt like video games were over for me.

They aren't, and that's nice, but to say that a single cookie-cutter ending with colored variants can work in any way to represent the 90+ hours I'd invested in a SINGLE playthrough is, IMO, ludicrous. ME3 should have been 30% shorter (just to make things sane for the devs) with at least three completely different endings to experience. Even if I didn't like those endings, they might well have lived up to the promises BioWare had made to its customers.

It's really awesome to see an article about my favorite games series on my favorite tech site. Especially now that the trilogy is over, and people haven't really been talking about the games for a while. I hope this encourages a few new people to play Mass Effect.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point during my first playthrough of the original game, I settled on Tali and Garrus as my landing party. From there, I used them all the time, on my many, many playthroughs.

Towards the end of Mass Effect 3, as I was heading for the final part of the game, I took some time to wander about the ship. I walked into the battery and saw Garrus and Tali almost kissing. It was a really minor, incidental moment that you could easily miss (and wouldn't see at all if you had taken one of them as a romantic option).

Because I'd taken them on missions through all three games, it felt like I'd had a hand in getting them together. It was as though BioWare had put this moment in the game just for me.

I too was thoroughly engrossed in the Mass Effect series to a degree that may have surpassed my love for the original two Fallouts.

Full disclosure: I bought 3 on release night and stayed up all night to play as much as possible before work. Couldn't sit around work, left early and stayed up all night again to finish it. At first the ending just felt a little off. Then after a half hour of tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep because the content was processing in my mind, it hit me. It was rubbish. Total rubbish. It took me 2-3 months to get over being actively angry about how bad the ending was. Now I'm just seriously disappointed knowing that it COULD have blown my hair back.

If I'm feeling nostalgic sometimes I catch myself watching videos by Genol3oost (http://www.youtube.com/user/Genol3oost) because they're beautiful pieces that could/should have been Bioware trailers for the games.

Amazing article! I'm currently on my second play-through of ME3 (didn't get to see the Extended cut or other DLC yet. so I skipped the Citadel stuff). These games captivated me. Thus far, according to raptr.com, I've logged 222 hours on all three games. I haven't played through them quite as many times as you have, but I was fully hooked and definitely made sure to take my time to see all the sights, talk to all the people, and do as many side quests as I could. I definitely loved the personality and just plain hanging out with these characters. I will also say that I chose Liara as the love interest in the first game and actually chose to forgo a romantic commitment with any of the characters in the second out of dedication. Losing Morlan was definitely sad. Eveery time I met up with old friends from ME1 in ME2 and 3, it was a very exciting moment for me, even emotionally.

And I didn't mind the ending quite so much. Though it could have been longer. So apparently the Citadel DLC fixes that. I can't wait to finish this game again!

By the way, I'm surprised you didn't mention Jack's return to the Normandy. Sure, her character development was great and all, but the actual conversations she had with the crew when she returned was hilarious. Especially when she started going at it with Joker over the comms. It was hilarious.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.